Using elaborate composition and colours that focus audience’s attention to the two central figures (Spanish Conquistador Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and Datu Sikatuna de Bohol), Luna intends to highlight the intimate and equal relationship between the two as they solemnly raise their glasses filled with blood following the native ritual of sandugo. Prof Sinardet revealed how by using themes of barbarism and civilisation, the representations would depict the Conquistadors as either barbaric for destroying an already civilised native society, or noble for benevolently taming the barbaric natives.Īgainst that context, Prof Sinardet located the painting as the opposite of Black Legend, although not quite like the Golden Legend. Different artistic representations were symbolic of this dichotomy and were often convenient political tools to legitimise or illegitimise the Spanish colonial presence.
She described the two polarizing narratives of the Spanish Conquest ( Conquista) – the central phenomenon narrated in the painting: on the one hand, the Black Legend ( Leyenda Negra) that demonises Spanish Conquistadors and on the other, the Golden Legend that idealises the Conquista. It was made in the late 19 th century by Filipino painter Juan Luna, considered today as a national hero. Prof Sinardet started by situating The Blood Compact within the socio-political context at the time.
#Black legend debate series
Prof Emmanuelle Sinardet giving a seminar for The Politics of Art in Southeast Asia Seminar Series on “Reflections on the Spanish Conquest and its Representation in the Philippines: El Pacto de Sangre (1886, The Blood Compact) by Juan Luna (1857-1899)” (Source: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute) The seminar was attended by more than thirty participants from universities, museums, embassies, other cultural institutions, and members of the general public.
Professor Emmanuelle Sinardet (Paris Nanterre University) presented the first seminar of the year, with a paper titled “Reflections on the Spanish Conquest and its Representation in the Philippines: El Pacto de Sangre (1886, The Blood Compact) by Juan Luna (1857-1899)”.
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